Criminal Defense | Another Serial Killer Linked to Two Attacks in Grim Sleeper Case

Source    : People
By        :  Christine Pelisek
Category  :  Criminal Defense Attorney Matthews Bark

An attorney for the alleged Grim Sleeper serial killer suspect Lonnie Franklin Jr. filed a motion last week claiming that DNA evidence found at two attacks link another serial killer to the crimes.

Franklin, a married father of two and former Los Angeles Police Department mechanic and sanitation worker for the city of Los Angeles, was charged in July 2010 with 10 murders and one attempted murder. He faces the death penalty for the alleged 23-year murder spree that began on Jan. 15, 1984, when Sharon Dismuke was discovered shot in the chest in the restroom of an abandoned gas station. Franklin was scheduled to go to trial Oct. 14 but it has been postponed again till Dec. 15.

In the motion, Franklin's defense claims convicted killer Chester Turner is linked through DNA evidence to the attacks on alleged Grim Sleeper victims Barbara Ware and Enietra Washington. Turner, a former pizza deliveryman and one of several serial killers who preyed on young, poor black women in South Los Angeles in the 80s and 90s, is on California's Death Row for killing 14 women, including one who was pregnant. Turner strangled his victims before he dumped their bodies mostly along freeways and alleys, within 20 blocks of his various homes and flophouses.

"DNA analysis reveals that Chester Turner must be included as a potential biological donor to the DNA found," the motion states.

Franklin's defense team also listed 19 other men as possible suspects in some of the attacks, including the boyfriend of one of the victims.

"The evidence reveals a high probability that a third party, or parties, committed one or more of the charged offenses as well as were the actual killer and the only individual present during the crime that had the intent to kill," the motion states.

At a court hearing Friday, Los Angeles prosecutor Marguerite Rizzo questioned the defense expert's methods of calculating the DNA evidence stating it defied "the correct methods of statistical analysis."

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy postponed Franklin's trial so prosecutors could have their experts analyze the evidence. Kennedy criticized Franklin's defense for handing prosecutors close to 2,000 pages of discovery days before the trial was set to start.

"You know, you kind of put everybody in a box," she said. "Because when you are turning material over, expert, scientific-type material in volume days before a scheduled trial that obviously require an expert's review – it's one thing to turn over a police report or an investigator's report. It's another thing to turn over scientific evidence at the last second…I'm not going to force the prosecution to proceed unprepared."

(Read More : http://www.people.com/article/defense-attorney-says-another-serial-killer-linked-grim-sleeper-case)